Saving Nikita's World
by misscam
Summary: Saving Alex. Saving Michael. Both lives changed Nikita's world. But sometimes, you save people only to lose them. Sometimes, you save people and still have to face possibly sacrifice them later.  Nikita/Michael, Alex


Saving Nikita's World  
>by misscam<p>

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

Author's Note: Vague spoilers for season two, set sometime during it.

II

_And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world _  
>- The Talmud<p>

II

Sometimes, you can save a life and and the world with it, as the saying goes. Sometimes, you can even save two.

Nikita did.

II

This is Alexandra Udinov, daughter of Nicolai, and in danger of losing herself to be that daughter well after her father is dead.

For the longest time, young Alex didn't know why she was saved, only that she was. That she lived, and her family died, and neither was an accident. The killing was most certainly malicious. It made it easier to assume the saving was too, forcing her to live.

When she did learn why, she tried her hardest to ignore it.

It's much easier to lose yourself when someone haven't thought you worth saving.

II

Certain sacrifices must be made, Alex thinks faintly. Something her father would have said. Something he would have wanted her to learn and live. Certain sacrifices. Like Michael's life, caught gathering intel for Nikita. Nikita's knight, Percy once called Michael. Nikita's heart more like it, Alex knows, but still a piece to be played. To be lost. Kill the heart, and the body dies. Kill Michael, and Nikita's world dies.

Certain sacrifices.

She looks at him as she pulls the trigger and feels the pain surge through her, toppling her forwards. The gun. Something is wrong with the gun. Like Percy did once, she vaguely remembers.

"I am sorry," she distantly hears Michael say. "We argued, you see. Couldn't agree if you'd actually kill one of of us."

She tries to focus, but the world seems hazy and to even keep her eyes open seems to hurt. She can hear the distant sounds of fighting, and then a door opening.

Nikita. She doesn't even have to look to know, and she can't either as her legs give in and she falls onto the ground.

"Who... Who thought I wouldn't?" she mumbles, the words sounding slurred even to her. Vaguely, she hears chains falling to the ground and two sets of footsteps walk over to her.

"I am not the optimist of us," Michael says, but it is Nikita who looks at her, looks and looks until Michael turns her away, taking her hand at the same time.

"Let her go," he says, and Alex closes her eyes to the darkness.

II

This is Michael, husband and father just bereft of both titles, still searching for new ones. (He will find them. Boyfriend. Righter of wrongs. Perhaps even father again.)

"Perhaps you lived for a reason," Percy told an old-over-night widower Michael, who merely gave him a look that has just enough rage that Percy thought that yes, for a reason indeed.

"I couldn't save them," Michael said darkly.

"You can still save others," Percy said, a lie he won't know for truth for many years yet.

II

"Back safe and sound," Birkhoff observes, and Michael sighs a little. Yes, he is. There was a slight risk getting captured, even if it was on purpose. A rather dangerous test, but one needed. Not for him, though.

"Yeah, thanks for the help setting it up," he tells Birkhoff instead, walking into the bedroom he and Nikita now shares.

She isn't there. Of late, there's been a lot of times he hasn't found her there, and even when she has, her mind has been elsewhere.

He has a pretty good idea where it is now. At least now she knows. Now, she might be able to stop trying to save Alex at the loss of everything else.

She is watching the sky as he walks over to her, and he kisses her neck as he slips his arms around her. She makes a soft sigh, but otherwise doesn't make a sound.

"Alex?" he asks after a while, and Nikita stiffens slightly, then leans back against him.

"She would have killed you," Nikita says, and he can hear the pain in her voice. "I thought... After all this, she wouldn't kill you. I thought... I saved her, she can't lose herself in this, she can't..."

"She was ready to kill me today."

"Tomorrow's another day."

"You can't save everyone," he says, ans she tilts her head to look at him.

"Look who is talking," she says, and her voice holds as much fondness as it does sadness.

II

"They set me up," Alex tells Amanda, keeping her voice carefully void of emotion.  
>"They tested you."<p>

"Yes."

"They will have think you failed," Amanda observes. "I think you passed. What do you think, Alex?"

"I think we're done talking," Alex says, rising from her chair and walking away, feeling Amanda's eyes on her all the while.

Only when she ducks out of sight into the bathroom, does Alex finally relax, leaning against the sink and breathing, just breathing. She doesn't cry. She doesn't look at herself in the mirror. She just stands there, wondering why she feels lost when she's so clearly staked out her course.

Take back what is hers, save her father's empire when she couldn't save him. That's all. That's simple. That's easy.

When she does look up, the mirror still shows Alex, but somehow, she can't quite see herself.

II

"You saved _me_," Michael whispers to her, his lips lingering at her ear, brushing ever so lightly. Nikita barely hears, her own heart feeling so loud in her skin, and his skin clinging to hers resonating his heartbeat too.

Only later, when they're both flushed and breathless and she's tucked her head under his chin and he has his arms loosely around her, only then does his words seem to sink into her. She knows why he's said it, of course. To make her feel better, that if she lost Alex, she still saved something else.

Saved Michael, she thinks. In a way, she supposes she did. Leading him to the truth about Division, giving him a purpose besides revenge, a purpose she knows all too well might give you something to live for, but not live with. Not indefinitely.

In another way, she might just have damned him, leading him to a life with her that has death at the edges. At least in Division he was safer. Here, she might lose him, and not just to a bullet. She might have to sacrifice him. She loves Michael, but not so that she would doom the world to save him. Because she does love Michael, who wouldn't want her to. Who wouldn't doom the world to save her.

(Probably. The other option, that they both love each other enough to doom the world if needed to save each other, that's almost more scary to consider. That maybe they are the world to each other.)

It's a fine line between saving and merely postponing loss, she thinks, and kisses him a touch desperately.

II

This is Nikita, troubled rebellious teen recruited by Division, never quite letting go of creating trouble or rebelling.

"I knew we saved you for a reason," Percy told young, just-made-agent Nikita after another successful mission, his smile almost that of a proud father. (Almost. Fathers usually don't order their daughters to kill.)

He has no idea, Nikita thought firmly. He really has no idea who he has saved, or for what reason.

Neither does she yet.

II

Sometimes, you can save a life. Nikita did. She saved Alexandra Udinov, a little princess who had a whole kingdom intended for her.

Sometimes, you can save the knight and carry him off into the sunset and live dangerously ever after. Nikita did. She saved Michael and let him save her too, living dangerously but at least living.

Saving Alex. Saving Michael. Both lives changed Nikita's world.

But sometimes, you save people only to lose them. Sometimes, you save people and still have to face possibly sacrifice them later.

Sometimes, you can save lives, save the world and still lose it all later.

Nikita might still, but she hopes not.

Oh, how she hopes not and intends to fight for it, save Alex and Michael both, and her world with it.

After all, she's always been good at rebelling.

II

FIN


End file.
